


Simpatico

by linguamortua



Series: Strike Me, Strike Anywhere [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Brock Rumlow Is Emotionally Constipated, Dirty Talk, HYDRA Husbands, HYDRA training, Hurt/Comfort, Hydra (Marvel), M/M, Past Rape/Non-con, hot power top jack rollins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-14
Updated: 2015-06-14
Packaged: 2018-04-04 08:38:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4131285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linguamortua/pseuds/linguamortua
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loyalty to anyone but himself hadn’t been a feature in Brock Rumlow's life, until he met Jack Rollins in a HYDRA training facility. Being with him felt comfortable in a way that human company had previously not been. It wasn’t weakness to follow Jack’s lead, perhaps because Jack never seemed to be actively leading. Sure, Brock ends up CO of the STRIKE team, but it's honestly hard for him to tell what of that was his own doing and what was Jack's influence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Simpatico

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Симпатико](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8249231) by [neun_geschichten](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neun_geschichten/pseuds/neun_geschichten)



You don’t find HYDRA: they find you. That’s the way it has to be, of course. Clandestine neo-Nazi infiltrators don’t exactly win big in the public relations stakes, so recruitment drives are off the table. Craigslist is a little too public. No, here’s how it works: one of the many tendrils of HYDRA’s extensive network will receive a directive from above. A skill set has been defined, and the heads are looking for a potential recruit in a certain department. Carefully and quietly, the HYDRA operative will scout possibilities, conduct an initial screening, deliver personal information up the chain for vetting. They, or more rarely another operative from outside, will make the approach. The potential recruit will accept an offer for an exciting new opportunity. They will be moved to a training facility, their sabbatical smoothed over with well-practiced and convincing lies. If they are good enough, and loyal enough, they will survive their training.

It’s never been clear to Brock Rumlow what kind of initiation you get for HYDRA office work, but his own specialist training almost killed him. He was young – 22 or so, if he recalls correctly – and bored in the army. Chafing against the rigid rules and hoping that the Marines might present a better challenge. By the time he’d applied (paperwork and training and more endless, tedious boredom), HYDRA had him marked. Maybe the burly officer who’d given him a stern speech about respect and courage and strength had been a Marine once upon a time, but he was, Brock later discovered, HYDRA through and through. Not that it mattered; Brock’s callow twenty-something self heard the speech and responded, gut-deep and instinctual. _We will teach you to be strong_ , the officer had said, _we will teach you to be stealthy_ and _we will teach you how to kill_. Brock had signed. It was easy, so easy to say yes. There was a logic, a mathematics, an _order_ being waved tantalisingly in front of his eyes and he was young, arrogant, and desperate to prove himself worthy and make his mark.

Order, he was informed soon afterwards, came only from pain. And there was pain; there were beatings, there was endless running in the cold and the wet, barefooted through forest and scrub with gun or knife or backpack. There were mock kidnappings at night, interrogations, helicopter rides to frozen wastes or sun-bleached deserts. There were eyes on them, always. There were clever, vicious minders tracking their reactions, their eating habits, their sleep, their friendships. There was the weird, dissociative slippage that comes with never knowing the date, never having a schedule, never knowing who could be trusted; the random punishments, the trawling of personal histories. That twelve months was, for Brock, a more savage hazing than he could ever have imagined in his most sadistic daydreams and yet, it was transformative, distilling him down to his purest essence. All of the weakness and childishness in him was stripped away. Years later, he would think of it as his genesis, his origin story. He bled, he scarred, he fought. He lied and lied and lied and was punished for lying, and lied again and had it beaten from him, and told the truth and was beaten harder for weakness, or for hiding something for so long, or for the lesson of pain itself. And more, the keenest lesson of all: it was where he met Jack Rollins.

*

Brock didn’t— men weren’t— it wasn’t like that, initially. Look, wherever there are military bases, there are girls. It’s a fact of life, a phenomenon that Brock experienced and took advantage of many times. In all honesty, he never spent a lot of time chasing tail. So many things provided him with something close enough to the rush of sex that the hunt didn’t seem worth the effort. A bar fight or a thick line of cocaine; the intense air pressure during a parachute jump; the thrill of stealing small things from superior officers; a lie well told. Girls would come to him, sometimes, but he’d never found that a particularly attractive prospect. Better if they had to struggle a little. Better if he could get off from the power trip alone. It looked better, too, to be seen to have the occasional liaison. How do you explain to your fellow soldiers that there was always something missing from sex? How to explain that the only satisfaction to be had was a physical release and a vicious stab of glee when girls cried? Not that the sight of a line of dicks in the shower did anything to Brock, either. What was the point? They were all probably going to wind up head-shot in some desert warzone anyway. No, the thing was to live, to fight, to survive, to excel. That was the excitement, what got the blood racing like nothing else.

When Jack came around, calm and easy-going but still resourceful and almost casually brutal in battle, Brock didn’t _get_ him right away. A mass of contradictions, the man was, and yet Brock would privately admit that Jack was a better soldier than he was. Probably a better person too, when you got right down to it. Everyone liked Jack, wanted to knock about with him, be his buddy. He exuded calm control, confidence without cockiness. Somehow he managed to simultaneously keep them all at arm’s length and never piss anyone off. He didn’t play favourites, but he didn’t spend a second of his time with anyone he didn’t want to. Since day one, though, he took to Brock and God, but Brock couldn’t help but be drawn into the safety of his orbit. Jack anchored him to reality in a way that nothing had quite managed to do yet. He was a constant, like a compass point, always a few steps ahead during a run or a climb. All Brock had to do was follow him. He was happy to comply.

*

Jack likes to concoct tall stories about how he acquired the livid scar down his chin, but only Brock knows the truth; he gave it to Jack. It had been an unusually cold winter that year, and the HYDRA facility at which they were being shaped into model soldiers was squat and grey under a thick layer of snow. When they’d arrived in autumn, there’d been no hint of the arctic winter to follow. Two trainees had already been relocated to medical with frostbite. The punishments were becoming more sadistic as the snow got thicker – or maybe it just felt that way this far north, with so little sunlight or warmth for so long.

Three months into training, Brock was sure that the only thing worth sticking around for was Jack. He’d change his mind later, of course, after all that pettiness and weakness was seared from him in HYDRA’s crucible. He’d find other reasons to bear the pain, and align himself to HYDRA’s ideology like a grown man, rather than a petulant boy. Right then, though, he just wanted out. Loyalty to anyone but himself hadn’t been a feature in his life to date, but he was already finding himself cleaving to Jack, wanting his approval, his attention, his companionship. Being with him felt comfortable in a way that human company had previously not been; Jack teased gently, laughed often and knew to a nicety when Brock wasn’t giving something his all. He never minded a correction in the gym or a shouted encouragement during a run if it came from Jack. It wasn’t weakness to follow Jack’s lead, perhaps because Jack never seemed to be actively leading.

It was obvious to Brock from the first that Jack brought out the best in him. In retrospect, it was obvious to everyone else, too.

*

They dragged him out of bed in the early hours of the morning, stifling his yells with a gag. He kicked out wildly, but he was outnumbered at least – he thought – three to one. They grabbed his hair, pushing him half-double to obscure his vision, but out of the corner of his eye he saw Jack’s bed was empty. His toes scraped and tripped along the floor as they hauled him outside and he tensed up all over, not struggling but not submitting. It’d be a test, just a test. He breathed through his heart’s uncontrolled racing. It was just combat. He knew this. The grunts pushed him out the door into a wash of freezing air and the stinging pain of ice underneath his bare feet. Out of the corners of his eyes he could see pairs of booted feet in a wide, loose circle. They threw him down in the middle of the ring and he smacked the ground hard, his left wrist jarring awkwardly.

‘Some of you,’ came a deep and ominous voice from Brock’s left, ‘may be confused about your purpose.’ There was a crunching of snow and ice under boots. ‘Some of you may mistakenly believe that you are here to make friends.’ It was the Commander, a tall, thin, dark-eyed man whose name had not been made known to the recruits. He paced around the inside of the circle of men and women, measured and slow. ‘You are incorrect. You are here to be forged into weapons for HYDRA. Anything that distracts from that end will not be tolerated.’ There was a scuffle of feet behind Brock, something heavy being dragged. ‘We own you,’ the Commander continued, ‘body and soul.’ Brock turned his head just as Jack was flung down beside him, grunting as he landed. ‘Weapons do not make friends. Weapons do not gossip like fishwives. Weapons do not choose who they are turned on.’

The circle of bodies was dead quiet, so Brock heard very clearly the slow draw of a knife out of a sheath. It hit the ground between Brock and Jack with a dull noise. The breath left Brock suddenly as if he’d been punched.

‘Steady,’ murmured Jack almost inaudibly, masking his voice with a shuffle of a bare foot in snow. He was only wearing boxers, but he wasn’t shivering in the slightest. In shorts and a t-shirt, Brock could already hardly feel his extremities.

‘Make it quick,’ the Commander said to nobody in particular, and stalked away. Jack hauled himself to his feet and gave Brock a hand to pull him up too. Brock took it and held on for the briefest moment longer as his already-numb feet found purchase on the ice. The ring of bodies around them contracted and there was the quietest hum of anticipation in the air. _After all of the screening and the training and the effort_ , Brock thought, _he can’t possibly want us to—_

‘Eyes on me,’ said Jack under his breath, as he reached down to pick up the knife. Brock tensed and settled into a low crouch, defensive and wary. Jack pressed the ball of his foot over the knife blade, gritted his teeth and with a yell snapped the blade and handle apart with a loud crack. He kicked the hilt away with the side of his foot and flung the blade over the heads of their fellow trainees.

‘We still have to fight,’ Brock told him, his voice hardly carrying to Jack. It took an inhuman effort of will to stop his voice from shaking.

‘So we fight,’ said Jack, resigned, and dropped into his own boxer’s crouch. Brock threw caution to the wind and dived for him, knowing that Jack had the height and weight advantage. He snapped his forehead into Jack’s face, shoved him backwards and swung a wide, clumsy haymaker that barely connected. They traded punches for a while, Jack heavier and hitting harder but slower, Brock quicker and more agile but hindered by the poor footing. Brock knew how Jack fought; he was pretty sure those meaty hands were pulling punches, but he couldn’t stop himself from flinging his whole body weight into his own strikes. The Commander told them to make it quick. He felt compelled to obey, nauseous with shock and fear and weakness. Then there was a sickening moment where his feet slid out from under him. Jack caught him by the back of his shirt and with one swift movement kneed him in the face, twice. Brock blacked out before he hits the ground.

*

‘You stupid son-of-a-bitch,’ said Jack from a very long way away. He sounded underwater for some reason. Brock groaned, trying to orient himself. He was sitting against a cold, hard wall, head hanging forward over his knees. His mouth tasted like blood and bile, his face throbbed with pain to the rhythm of his heartbeat. He peeled his eyes open to see Jack sitting cross-legged in front of him, still shirtless and bare-footed. His right eye was swelling, his top lip split. There was a long, livid cut down his chin which was neatly held closed by steri-strips. It was puffed up – looked bad, a nasty skin flap oozing a little blood.  

‘What,’ Brock said as the room tilted and re-levelled out.

‘You’re a stupid son-of-a-bitch,’ Jack repeated, but there was no bite to his voice. He wiped Brock’s face with a washcloth. His knuckles were bruised, hands warm and rough on his face as he inspected Brock for damage. Brock offered up his hands and Jack cleaned them off too, manipulating his fingers to check for breaks or sprains. ‘It’s all theatre, Brock, it’s all theatre.’

‘He gave us a knife.’

‘Didn’t mean we had to use it.’

‘It felt like we did.’

‘It was supposed to,’ said Jack, and cupped Brock’s chin in his hand. ‘Poor army kid, you are. Not prepared for this shit.’

‘I hit you, man,’ Brock said, letting his forehead rest on Jack’s shoulder. ‘I was really going for it.’ Why did he feel so fucked-up guilty about this? It’s not like they hadn’t sparred plenty of times. It’s not like they hadn’t seen the kinds of punishments HYDRA doled out regularly. Now here he was, stuck in a shower cubicle with Jack’s body heat radiating out to him and feeling like someone had jammed a shiv right in a tender spot, right under his breastbone.

‘Yeah,’ Jack said, ‘You tried. Look, they don’t want us forming attachments, right? They don’t want us getting close when they’re just gonna split us up again at the end of this. HYDRA’s the first loyalty.’

‘Attachments?’ Brock asked, feeling stupid. His legs were sprawled one on the floor, one over Jack’s lap, and he could feel Jack’s warm breath on his ear.

‘Christ, you idiot,’ Jack said. ‘How do you get dressed in the morning without help?’ He turned his head then and pressed his mouth to Brock’s neck, hot and open. Brock didn’t need to think, he just followed Jack’s lead like always. He let his arms come up and over Jack’s shoulders and leaned into Jack’s questing lips. ‘I don’t have patience for a whole lot of people,’ he said against Brock’s jaw, ‘you’re the exception.’

Brock made an indistinct noise and turned to kiss back, confused and dizzy and aroused at once. Jack’s mouth was sure and slow against his. With Jack’s arms locking them together, Brock drifted, the languid press of Jack’s tongue over his like a balm.

 ‘They’ll make us hurt each other again,’ Brock said a while later, when Jack had moved to sit next to him against the wall, one muscular arm around his shoulders holding them together.

‘Make? They don’t fuckin’ own me,’ laughed Jack as though it was that simple, and that was how it all started.

*

Wait, that’s wrong; it started earlier than that. It started, Brock suddenly remembers vividly, in a low-ceiled concrete barracks room. He’d walked in, kit bag over his right shoulder and training gear from the quartermaster over his left arm. Three of the eight beds were neatly made with bags marking their absent owners stowed underneath. At the very end of the room, a heavy-shouldered man sat with his back to the door, brushing evenly and rhythmically at a worn black boot. Brock had walked slowly down the long path between the beds.

‘End one’s free,’ the man said, without pausing his careful boot cleaning. Brock set his bag on the bed opposite, name tag showing. ‘Army, then.’

‘Yeah. You?’

‘Navy SEAL,’ the man replied.

‘Damn,’ Brock said, impressed despite himself. The guy barely looked any older than Brock, although later Brock would find that he was pushing 30. ‘Seen much action?’

‘That’s classified,’ the SEAL said solemnly, but Brock glanced across at the right moment and saw the flicker of a teasing smile.

‘Is your name classified, bad ass?’ Brock asked with the same levity. The man finally put his boot down and stood, his broad frame blocking out a good amount of the light from the window.

‘Jack. Jack Rollins.’ He padded over in socks, extending a big paw towards Brock. He smelled like boot polish and sandalwood, and he looked like an adventurer out of the cheap serial novels Brock read as a kid. His face was tanned and pleasant in a rough, broken-nosed way. His hair was slicked back all old-fashioned and his brown eyes were open and long-lashed; incongruous parts of a likeable whole.

‘Brock Rumlow,’ said Brock, and they shook hands.

*

‘We survived,’ Brock murmured to Jack as they stashed their slick new SHIELD gear in their lockers. There was no passing out ceremony, no way of solemnising their commitment to HYDRA. Just as recruits were unceremoniously dumped into training with the appropriate cover story dropped behind them, their paths into government departments were similarly abruptly orchestrated. They showed up, spent a day in briefings and were handed an ID card each: easy. For now, they’d be bunking in STRIKE quarters. Later, HYDRA would find them apartments, smooth everything into place so that infiltration was frictionless and subtle. It looked like the two of them came as a package deal now. Brock tried not to think too hard about why, or what it had cost them.

‘Pub tonight?’ Jack grinned back. It had been an age since they’d had the liberty of going out for a drink.

‘Don’t know any,’ Brock grimaced. ‘We should ask around. Fit in.’ Jack laughed at him, waved his phone in the air.

‘Google it, idiot,’ he said, but his voice was fond and friendly, as always. ‘Can’t celebrate the right way with a bunch of these losers around.’

Brock shivered a little at _the right way_ , let his imagination grip him for a moment. He took Jack’s phone, watched DC open up in pastel lines and blue dots on the screen. One night out on their own wouldn’t hurt.

They ended up in a little dive bar a long way from the Triskelion, where nobody might walk in on them. Jack was casual that night in his old blue Levis and a soft grey shirt open at the throat. His cuffs were unbuttoned and folded back once, showing just enough of his muscular forearms to tempt. There were two seats at the end of the bar at right angles to one another, and they sat with their knees pressed together drinking beer in companionable almost-silence. The glasses collected in a cluster between them.

‘Brock,’ Jack said suddenly, voice thick with alcohol. ‘Come with me.’ Brock rose from his seat like a puppet. Jack took his wrist in a firm grip, fingers and thumb overlapping easily. He towed Brock to the little toilet cubicle at the back of the bar. It was barely big enough for both of them, but Jack managed to reach behind his back and slide the latch into the hook to secure the door. Brock sat down on the cracked toilet seat and Jack slid to his knees in between Brock’s legs with a fluidity surprising in such a big man.

‘Is this the part where we celebrate?’ Brock asked, voice low. He leaned forward, arms folded on his elbows and face near to Jack’s; just near, because no matter how many times it happened he could never quite seem to be the one to close the distance. Jack shoved a hand into his pocket and brought out a lighter.

‘Hold,’ he instructed, and Brock complied without a word, turning the metal case over and over between his fingers. Jack brought a little switchblade out of his sock.

‘This is getting real intense, real fast,’ said Brock, a tight excitement building in his chest. Jack grinned up at him from his knees, took the lighter and started heating up the blade. He pinched the knife delicately between the tips of his thick fingers and Brock was transfixed.

‘Hold,’ said Jack again, carefully passing Brock the knife by the handle. He rolled up his left sleeve with a quick, accurate gesture. When he looked up, it was directly into Brock’s eyes. ‘Mark me,’ he said. Brock stared. ‘Mark me up, come on.’ The knife was rapidly cooling in Brock’s hand; Jack took his wrist, drawing him closer, and reheating the blade.

‘With… with what?’ Brock asked, hearing his voice drop low and husky.

‘Whatever you want,’ Jack said, and then pulled Brock’s mouth to his with a hand behind his neck. It was a serious kind of kiss, hard and uncompromising, and Brock opened his mouth for Jack’s tongue without hesitation. When Jack released him, Brock was flushed and half-hard in his jeans. Jack heated the knife again. ‘Do it.’ He drew his left shirt sleeve up a little more, exposing his smooth inner arm. Brock reached out, running his fingertips over that blank canvas and then laid the top edge of the little blade in a horizontal line. Jack hissed an inward breath; whatever, Brock knew what kind of pain Jack could take. This was nothing, nothing at all to a man who’d snapped a knife between his bare foot and winter ice and then fought with blood freezing against his sole. Brock made another line, forming a neat cross like a plus sign.

‘Give me the lighter,’ he said, and Jack flipped it open and held it, letting Brock turn the blade this way and that until the smell of hot metal filled the tiny closet. In two quick presses, Brock finished his mark with a pair of diagonal lines. An asterisk, or a star, in four thin red lines of burned skin. Jack raised his forearm into what light the dingy overhead bulb provided and blew gently on his skin, cooling it.

‘Those steady hands, Brock,’ he said, very low and fierce, and ran his right hand up Brock’s throat, tipping his face at the right angle for another deep, desperate kiss. ‘I’m gonna— you don’t know what I’m going to do to you later.’

‘Let’s leave,’ Brock said urgently, wanting to get back to the snug, quiet rooms deep under the Triskelion where STRIKE operatives were barracked. They were a far cry from HYDRA facilities; private and comfortable with locking doors and no prying eyes.

*

Jack’s mouth on his dick is all Brock can think about; he’s a fucking devil, is Jack, sucking him off long and slow and holding him down with big hands on his hips. Jack’s hair’s too short to grab so all Brock can do is twist one hand into the sheet and bite down on his other wrist and ride out the perfect, wet pleasure of Jack’s tongue. The bunks here are pretty well sound-proofed, but old habits die hard; besides, there’s an intense bliss in being naked with Jack on a real bed, even if this one’s half-recessed into a wall and barely big enough for both of them. Jack’s crammed in at the bottom end of the bed, shoulders pressed firmly to the underside of Brock’s thighs. That’s new; the experience of Jack rolling him onto the bed, climbing in after him and sliding Brock’s hips towards him with a swift pull. Brock moans into his arm and tries to arch up further into Jack’s slick mouth using his legs as leverage, but Jack pins him easily with an arm across his belly and chuckles with his mouth full. The vibration finishes Brock off so that he comes with a great full-body twitch and lies there, panting and still drunk.

‘My turn,’ says Jack, licking his lower lip, and Brock immediately slides over so Jack can lie down. His mouth is watering a little at the thought of sucking Jack off, of having the leisure to blow him like he deserves, like Brock wants to. Jack’s leaning out the bed though, pawing through his jeans for the knife and lighter, and Brock takes a quick, excited breath.

‘Gonna make me look like a badass?’

‘Shut it,’ says Jack, with warmth in his voice. ‘You’re too pretty for a little burn to make you look like a badass. Wait until you’re old like me.’ There’s seven years and seven weeks between them, which has always had a portentous feel to Brock.

‘Are we going to match?’ Brock asks, still panting a little from his orgasm, and from the thought of Jack deliberately hurting him.

‘Wait and see,’ Jack says, and he pushes Brock’s legs apart to expose the soft brown expanse of his leg. The knife heats up, and the lighter flickers warm and orange in the dark room. It softens the lines of Jack’s face, emphasises the corners of his mouth curled into a little smile, his uneven, broken nose, the scar down his mouth and chin. ‘Hold still,’ he warns, and then Brock lets out a little sound and twitches in Jack’s sure hands as he painstakingly runs the tip of the hot blade over Brock’s inner thigh. The smell of burning hair hangs acrid in the hair and the pain is biting, exquisite, cutting through his post-coital languor. He floats, levitates; Jack marks him with confidence, the way he does everything else. Then it’s over, and Jack’s blowing on his leg to soothe it. Jack flicks the lighter on. ‘Take a look,’ he says. Brock looks down and there, nestled at the top of his right thigh, is a perfect little skull and crossbones, raw and red and stinging.

*

It didn’t surprise Brock when he was given command of a STRIKE team. He knew he was good. After almost ten years at SHIELD he’d earned his step, fair and square. Without hesitation he made Jack his SIC, and Jack ruffled his hair and laughed.

‘Fuck _you_ ,’ Brock snapped back as he rearranged his hair, half-amused but annoyed by his inability to repress a smile.

‘I’ll be doing all the work for you,’ Jack told him. ‘I know how this is gonna go. Hey Jack, do my paperwork. Jack, make the coffee. Jack, carry my shit for me, life is hard.’

‘Wouldn’t be here without you,’ Brock mumbled, suddenly suffused with gratitude and want and feeling flushed and overflowing, somehow.

‘You earned it, army kid,’ said Jack. ‘I just kicked your ass a little.’

*

Once again, their drop vehicle is delayed by three hours with a minor fault. Once again, they’re killing time in the ass-end of Ohio before the chopper (possibly) arrives at 1800. They’re sitting in a diner and Jack’s leaning against the counter, giving the teenage waitress his patter. She’s in fits of giggles, pink and thrilled and touching her small hands to his muscular forearm. Jack’s always liked women. Not just in bed, Brock knows; he’s sweet to them all the time, flirts with gentle humour and little compliments, listens to their crap and seems to actually care about it. Right now the waitress is measuring her hands against his, and he picks one up in his big paw and traces a ring she’s wearing, taps on her bubble-gum pink nails and makes a little kissy face. He gets a lot of play, does Jack, mostly from young, coltish girls. Brock could make a laundry list of what Jack looks for in a girl, could point out his type in a crowd. Somewhere between sixteen and twenty-three, slim, long-legged. He favours bouncing curls, denim shorts, big wide smiles and lots of eye makeup. Bonus points if they’re still teenage-shy, and if they call him ‘Jackie’.

Jack’s got a special phone for his ladies – his word, not Brock’s. It’s an old, battered thing, and it makes a baby bird chirp when he gets a text message, which is all of the goddamn time. There’s a girl in every town they end up in, if not when they arrive then by the time they leave. The most baffling thing of all, Brock thinks, as he watches a barely-legal small-town waitress gaze adoringly at a forty-six year old bruiser with a broken nose and a scarred face, is that they’re _always_ pleased to see him. One time, they were walking down a street in a quiet town in Texas, and a little Mexican chick had barrelled out of a shop and leaped into his arms, wrapping her thin legs around his waist and kissing him soundly. Brock couldn’t remember STRIKE ever having landed there before, and yet here they were and here _she_ was. Jack had called her _honeybunch_ and _lovergirl_ , chucked her under the chin,and hadn’t come back to their digs that night.

 _Josefina_. That was her name. She ended up dead shortly after that in a HYDRA clean-up op. A lot of Jack’s girls end up dead. He’s careless about that. If he really cared, Brock reassures himself, he’d keep them on the quiet. Then again, if he didn’t care, why would he keep their numbers? Why would he send them cute texts in his downtime? Why would he keep coming back, back to Josefina and to Magdalena in Vienna and Maria in New York and Lexie in Atlanta, and all the rest?

Brock had shot Magdalena himself, as a favour. Whatever, right? He hadn’t known the girl so it was easier for him, and he’d never had a lot of excessively delicate feelings about killing. He’d rapped on the door of her tiny artist’s apartment, told her he had a message from Jack. When she turned to lead him into her home, he’d gently caught her around the mouth and shot her twice in the back of the head. The noise had been muffled by a good suppressor and the press of his body into the gun’s recoil. She was almost his height, but slight, almost fragile, in his arms. It had been simple and efficient; a textbook killing. HYDRA had cleaned up after him. Back in DC, Jack had told him to come over, and when Brock let himself in with his copy of the key there’d been his good, rich, slow-cooked beef stew, a lot of beer and a store-bought lime pie. Jack had been real grateful for the favour.

*

Jack didn’t have a girl in DC, so that was something.

*

 ‘Rotting fucking Christ, Jack,’ says Brock, pacing his apartment like an angry cat. ‘Did you even fucking think? Did you think for two seconds before you barrelled into a fire fight? I watched you go off half-cocked, you bastard. Pure fucking luck that was Kneale taking a bullet to the forehead and not you. Pure fucking luck your brains are still in your thick skull.’ He breaks off for a moment, sweating down his back with adrenaline and anger. Jack’s sitting in his chair – the big brown corduroy armchair in the corner that Brock never uses – with one leg over the arm. He’s watching Brock with no particular expression. The fingers on his right hand are tightly taped together and there’s still dried blood down his neck. The sight of him sitting there, impassive and bloodied, doesn’t do anything to calm Brock down. ‘I told you—’ restarts Brock, and his voice cracks so he shuts up and flings himself down onto his sofa, lies there with one arm over his eyes and his ankles crossed on the arm like always. Jack reaches a hand out, rests it on his head.

‘Someone had to go in there,’ says Jack, quiet and implacable. ‘Couldn’t be you.’

‘Could have been anyone else though, idiot.’

‘Nobody else would have got the job done and you know it, Brock.’ There’s a long silence between them, stretching on a couple of minutes. Jack’s blunt fingers move idly in Brock’s hair. ‘You know what you should have done.’

‘I know.’

‘It’s your job.’

‘Shut the fuck up, Jack, I said I fucking _know_.’

‘I’ll never disobey an order under fire, but I’ll damn well do what has to be done if you refuse to _give_ me that order.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Brock says heavily. He’s tired now. The adrenaline’s left him and his muscles are sore. He hates arguing with Jack, largely because Jack’s always fucking right. Yeah, the warehouse needed to be cracked. Yeah, they couldn’t have done it without a strong frontal assault. The door was narrow, a tight, lethal bottleneck. Yeah, Jack’s the only man that could have pulled that shit off. He reaches for Jack’s wrist and pulls on it insistently until Jack comes to join him on the sofa, slotting his big body in along Brock’s and bear-hugging him into stillness.

They drowse for a while, aching and stinking of sweat and nitro and smoke. Jack’s hands creep idly under Brock’s shirt and Brock comes around, leaning into the touch and pressing himself closer. Jack is rubbing up hard against his thigh; he just needs a bit of shut-eye after a mission and then he’s ready to fuck. He’s always been that way, in SHIELD quarters or one of their apartments.

‘Mmm,’ Brock hums inarticulately and helps pull his own shirt up over his head. They wrestle lazily, hands on belts and skimming skin. After all this time – more than fifteen years, now, seventeen, maybe? – they barely need to be awake to get each other off. Brock kicks off his pants and tangles their legs together. Jack pins them between his own and rolls Brock up onto his chest.

‘Wouldn’t have gone in there if I thought I couldn’t make it back out,’ Jack tells him, his voice buzzing against Brock’s scalp. Jack runs his hands through Brock’s hair a few times, combing it through, and then tugs it so Brock’s looking right into his face. His honest face – honest with Brock, anyway.

‘I get it, Jesus fuck,’ Brock says, kissing him long and deep then, not wanting to talk any longer. They’d always been simpatico. Rehashing the argument wouldn’t take them anywhere. When Brock couldn’t make a call, Jack made it. Whatever. They were an effective team, right? That’s why they’d been paired up at the beginning. That’s why they were inseparable. That’s why—Jack sits up suddenly and plants his feet square on the floor, Brock in his lap.

‘Is the lube still—’ Jack fishes under the sofa, Brock tilting alarmingly to the left. ‘Yeah, yeah, okay, I got you.’ Jack’s a real dab hand at getting Brock lubed up one-handed. They’ve fucked like this a lot in the past, on the sofa, Brock up against a shelf or a wall, wherever works; Jack’s had a lot of practice. It’s not long before Brock’s really hot for him, rubbing his hard cock up against the firm muscle of Jack’s belly while Jack fingers him open, reaching around behind him and pressing in deep and wet. His fingers are thick and insistent. ‘Relax,’ Jack says, rocking his fingers deeper.

‘Trying,’ Brock replies with just a hint of irritation. He just wants—he’s just tense from the fighting, from both fights. It’ll go away soon.

‘Up,’ Jack directs, smacking his thigh. Brock groans a little deep in his throat and leans into the sting, but he moves up on his knees and lets Jack line his dick up just right. Jack gives the smallest rock of his hips, slides the head of his cock inside. Brock pushes down and back, trying for more but it’s futile. Sex happens at Jack’s pace. That’s what makes it so goddamn good. If he focuses really hard, Brock could probably remember fucking twenty-year-old military groupies. He knows, in a dark recess of his mind, that pushing some bitch face-first into a mattress and making her cry used to feel good. Now there’s only Jack, only his rough, strong hands and his big dick and his well-practiced patience. There’s only the two of them, panting into each other’s mouths. Brock hears himself whimper out a short sound as Jack holds his hips and slides him down until Jack’s all the way in him, full and tight.

Brock shifts to wrap his legs over Jack’s hips and just hangs, suspended off the edge of the couch but at the same time totally safe. He’s secure. Jack’s never dropped him. He’s got one big arm around Brock’s waist, the other cradling the back of Brock’s head. Brock lets himself go boneless in Jack’s arms. They’ve done this so many times; it’s comfortable. Jack’ll take care of him, give him everything. He curls his left arm around the back of Jack’s neck and just lets the right one hang down by his side, so his wrist and hand fall against the outside of Jack’s thigh. No need to hold on to him, not now, not yet; it’s just enough to have the contact there. Jack warms him up with shallow thrusts and deep kisses, tugging at his lower lip. Brock wills his mind to shut up, concentrates on the slow, deliberate way Jack moves him around, the particular taste of Jack’s tongue, his sweat and musk.

He’s getting fucked properly now, Jack bouncing him up and down and spilling out sweet nothings against his mouth, his neck, his ear. Brock is pressing his body as close as possible, loving the rough friction on his dick which is a hair away from too much until Jack drops his chin to his chest and spits down. Then it’s all hot-wet-warm-good, Jack’s bulk taking every buck and twitch and thrust that Brock has in him. Each time Jack jerks up into Brock’s ass he moans out a word or a sound, _mm, fuck you’re, yeah, so good, c’mon, ride me, ahh, Brock, yeah_.

Brock grits his teeth together, can’t talk. If he talks when they’re like this, he’ll say everything. Sometimes he wants to, in the moment; wants to open his big fucking mouth and just come out with it all.

_I’d be dead ten times over if it wasn’t for you having my back._

_I hate that you fuck girls am I not enough you can be such an asshole—_

_– don’t know what love feels like but I’m pretty sure I—_

‘Yeah,’ Brock lets himself say, ‘Come on, harder, do it,’ and ‘fuck, Jack, fuck, fuck, yeah—’

*

_Consider reading[Four Pines](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4624707) now, then come back and finish this story._

_*_

‘They lock him up in cryo,’ explained Brock with his mouth full. ‘He’s not always switched on.’

‘Fuck me,’ Jack said, picking a sad olive out of his side salad and popping it into his mouth. ‘Can you do that? Just freeze and thaw out people?’

‘Looks that way,’ said Brock, ‘but they have to do this neuro procedure to him in between times so the programming holds. They strap him down into a chair, fry his brain with electricity.’

‘Get out.’

‘No, seriously. I watched it happen. He was talking some crap about knowing Rogers, and Pierce just had him wiped, like a hard drive.’

‘Brainwashing, man,’ Jack spat out his olive pit. ‘That’s freaky.’

‘It’s necessary,’ said Brock, feeling argumentative. ‘He’s a tool now, can’t have him malfunctioning.’

‘Malfunctioning?’ Jack raised an eyebrow and mopped up the last of his ketchup with a stray French fry. ‘That’s not a word for people.’

‘Look, sacrifices have to—’

‘—be made, I know, I know. Still makes my skin crawl.’

‘After all these years, we still gotta have this conversation.’ Brock shook his head, frustration and disappointment churning together in his guts. ‘Order comes at a price. We’ve all got our parts to play, and sometimes that doesn’t look pretty.’ He dropped his voice low, although the football game and rowdy punters could only hear him if he yelled. ‘You want to take Rogers out yourself? Or Stark? We need the Soldier. He’s a pawn in the bigger game.’

‘Yeah yeah,’ Jack said, waving a placating hand. ‘You going to finish that?’ He swapped their plates around and chewed through the last two bites of Brock’s cheeseburger. ‘One system’s much the same as another, if you ask me.’

‘I didn’t,’ said Brock, with an eyeroll.

‘All right,’ agreed Jack, ‘but I’m telling you anyway. HYDRA’s all right. The pay’s good. They’ve got an ideology, you know, they’re going places. I can respect that.’ He drained the last of his beer and signalled for the check. ‘That’s all I’m saying.’

‘All you’re saying in public,’ sniped Brock, deflated by Jack’s easy refusal to rise to his bait.

‘Well, I’m not an _idiot_ ,’ Jack conceded. ‘Point is though, nobody owns you. Nobody owns me. Not like that poor fucker in his brainwashing chair.’

‘But they could,’ Brock finished, knowing the line of Jack’s argument from sheer repetition over the years. ‘They could if they wanted to.’

‘Right,’ said Jack, pulling on his coat. ‘All I’m saying. They could if they wanted to. You just remember that.’

*

The first thing Brock registers when he comes around in the hospital is searing, tight pain. Every inch of him is aflame. The second thing is; he was there, he was right behind me on the stairs. He croaks, spasms in agony. He needs to know. His mouth and throat are raw and taste like copper and bile, but he manages to rasp the words _casualty list_ to the nurse over and over until she understands and confers with the agent outside the room. Some time later – everything is very fluid and hazy, minutes and hours slipping by – a different agent brings a sheaf of papers and slowly recites the alphabet. Brock jerks and makes a little sound through his teeth at the letter R.

‘Rand, F., GSW torso,’ lists the agent. ‘Reed, B., multiple GSW to torso. Reilly, I., crushed by building. Rollins, J. GSW to head.’

Brock feels the scream welling up in his throat, hot and gritty. When it bursts out, it feels like puking napalm. They rush to sedate him. He wakes and screams, raging against his restraints. They sedate him again.

*

The armour is heavy and tight against the black compression gear underneath it. His skin is healed but the nerves still cry out when he straps on the final piece and settles the pauldrons by banging on each with a gauntleted fist. The smell of white paint is still fresh and stinging in his nose. He looks in the mirror, blue-black with white slashes staring impassively back at him.

He thinks to himself, _yes._

 _They can call me Crossbones_.


End file.
